(ii) The Gin Age
EXPIRING HOPES
a small remove from innocent»blood."!
Burrington, too, in 1757, declared that he had been "informed by a man now living that the officers of one parish in Westminster received money for more than 500 bastards, and reared but one out of all that number.'?
Hanway's protracted crusade on behalf of foundling and exploited children was, we repeat, one of the marks of the gradually awakening Social Conscience ; and that awakening was a product of the new religious emphasis on the sanctity of all human life.® (ii) The Gin Age The incredible bestialities practised in the earlier half of the eighteenth century upon friendless children become more understandable when it is remembered that this was par excellence
the Gin Age "' of English history, and that Hogarth's pictures, ** Election Entertainment" and " Gin Lane," far from being caricatures, are, in fact, realistic side-lights on the country's plight.
Lecky pronounces the national gin-drinking habit, which reached its zenith by the middle of the century, " the master curse of English life."* The " curse " of national drunkenness, however, like most other social plagues, had a gradual development.
After the Restoration, the custom of drinking toasts to the sovereign became universal ; and this whetted the taste for alcohol.
In 1688 the beer brewed in England, with a population of but slightly over 5,000,000, was "no less than
12,500,000 barrels."
Meanwhile, too, large quantities of French brandy were being imported.
So the Government, in 1689, partly through " hostility to France"' and partly " to encourage home distilleries," prohibited all importation of spirits, and on payment of small duties threw open the distilling business to all and sundry.® Little did legislators then realise what they were doing: within a generation had arrived the " Gin Age," and with it,
"cheap, fiery, poisonous" alcohol was flowing everywhere.
Lecky gives the following figures to show how vile spirits in this period became a national beverage, out-rivalling beer.
In 1 An Earnest Appeal ..
2 Burrington's Answer to William Brackenridge's Letter, p. 23.
8 'To appraise the epochal advance in child welfare since Hanway's day, see the author's Dr. Barnardo:
Physician, Pioneer, Prophet (Child Life Yesterday and To-day), fourth cheap edition.
(Allen & Unwin, 2s. 6d.) 4 Lecky, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 476.
5 Parliamentary History, XII, 1211-14.
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
1684 only 527,000 gallons of spirits were distilled in England ; by 1714 the number was 2,000,000; in 1727 it had risen to 3,601,000 gallons ; in 1735 it was 5,394,000 ; by 1742 it struck
7,000,000 ; and when in 1750 it reached its peak, the consumption of spirits was 11,000,000 gallons.
The resulting welter of national drunkenness, Bishop Benson declared, had made the English people 'what they never before were, cruel and inhuman."!
Wesley, consequently, was giving vent to no fanaticism when repeatedly he pronounced the liquor traffic, which meanwhile had developed titanic vested interests, an arch plague among his countrymen.
Some idea of the strangle-hold in which this traffic had engripped the nation, may be gauged by the fact that when things reached their '"' lowest depths " (1750), 506 of the 2,000 houses in St. Giles (Holborn), London, were gin-shops ; while in addition the area had eighty-two tuppenny common lodging houses—all of them vicious brothels—wherein "gin was the principal liquor drunk."?
In the entire Holborn district, one house in every five-and-a-quarter was a gin-shop ; even in Westminster, every eighth house plied the same deadly business ; gin was sold from barrows in the streets, and secretly from cellars and attics ; and before the accumulated horrors of back alleys in these gin-inflamed areas, imagination pales.
The case of Judith Dufour, recorded in the Old Bailey Session Papers (February, 1735), is suggestive of many.
This woman brought her toddling child from the workhouse where it had just been clothed, strangled it, threw the body in a Bethnal Green ditch, sold the clothes for one shilling and fourpence, and forthwith spent the money on gin, which she shared with another woman who had connived in the murder.
Henry Fielding, in 1751, as a London magistrate, affirmed gin '' the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than
100,000 people in this Metropolis," deploring, at the same time, '' the dreadful effects' which he had "' the misfortune every day to see and to smell, too."
'"' What must become," he asks, '' of an infant who is conceived in gin, with the poisonous distillations of which it is nourished, both in the womb and at the breast?'
Again his blind—but far-seeing—brother, Sir John Fielding, who on Henry's death, in 1754, succeeded him as Bow Street Magistrate, attacking '' this liquid fire by which men drink their hell beforehand," declares its vendors
" the principal officers of the King of Terrors,' who conveys "' more 1 Lecky, I, pp. 479-81 ; and Fraser's Life of Berkeley, p. 332f.
- George, op. cit., p. 415 see, too, Fohnson's England, Vol. 1, p. 312.
3 Enquiry into the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), p. 19.
EXPIRING HOPES
to the regions of death than the sword or the plague."!
Rev.
James Townley's protest, in 1751, is only less emphatic :
Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury frought, Makes human Race a Prey, It enters by a deadly Draught, And steals our Life away."
During the national " orgy of spirit drinking" (1720-51), crude gin was being sold from thousands of grimy dens at even a penny a pint; and so all-consuming was the craving for the initial excitement and the ensuing oblivion of intoxication, that many gin shops hung signs reading:
" Drunk for Id:
Dead Drunk 2d.:
Free Straw."?
Some dens, appealing to the more fastidious, advertised '' Clean Straw,"
Nor was this passion for alcohol confined to the congested denizens of back alleys and slums.
Its ravages affected all classes.
As early as 1708 Defoe, referring to the corruption of elections, averred that "it is not an impossible thing to debauch this nation into a choice of thieves, knaves, devils, anything, comparatively speaking, by the power of various intoxications."*
Houghton, Walpole's country seat, was a frequent scene of boisterous drunken revelries, whose origin is easily traced; for when Walpole was a young man his father used to pour into his glass
"a double portion" of wine, saying:
" Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once; for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be a witness of the intoxication of his father.''4
A generation later, in Sir Robert's heyday—the age of " peeping-galleries"" and " drinking-bouts "'—when '" gentlemen," squires and judges boasted of being "' four" and " fivebottle? men, a fashionable father would not have scrupled about his son witnessing his inebriation : for in that era * the Mother of Parliaments," on various occasions, adjourned early because " the honourable Members were too drunk to continue the business of State'? ; and marriages, when possible, were solemnised in the morning to ensure the sober senses of the contracting parties.
Indeed, among the mounting thousands of " Fleet marriages,"® one or other of the contracting persons
1 A Brief Description of London (1776), Pp. xxiii.
2 Lecky, op. cit., I, p. 4793 Wilson's Life of Defoe, III, p. 23f.
4 Lecky, I, p. 478; W. Coxe's Walpole, 1, p. 758.
5 Dr. George, op. cit., PP. 314-15 3 Lecky, I, pp. 490-1.
Lecky says :
"It was proved before Parliament that on one occasion there had been 2,954 Fleet marriages in four months."
Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (1753) put a stop to Fleet matriages.
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was nearly always sodden drunk, and rarely were the '' vagabond parsons "" who performed such unions—generally in "* pubs." — completely sober.
Even lord-bishops at this time too commonly were " good fellows " among the country gentry ; and when they became "' over merrie," a favourite witticism was to imply that " only as lords, and not as bishops," did they imbibe so freely : for the phrase "drunk as a lord," carried then a peculiar pertinence.
An exhaustive survey of the ramifications of the liquor traffic during the ascendancy of the gin period would itself fill a volume.
Increasingly "' the trade '? came to be associated with the landed interests; vast fortunes were amassed from the manufacture of cheap alcohol, and vicious vested interests became deeply entrenched.
In many crafts, including all branches of building, the custom became established of paying wages late on Saturday night in public houses and other drinking dens ; every workman was " expected '? to purchase at least a quart of drink ; "' proper sports " of course bought more ; and, as frequently the pay-desk was not opened till near midnight, many an artisan returned to his family "drunk and emptyhanded," thus causing
'' words and blows."!
All manner of clubs, too, met regularly in drinking quarters, many beginning as benefit fraternities and degenerating into mere drinking rabbles.
Even Vestries often met in public houses ; wedding and funeral services were sometimes conducted in them, while frequently convivial baptismal parties were held therein.
The whole apprenticeship system, too, was tied, almost inextricably, to the drinking habit.
Every step and stage of advance in an apprenticeship exacted a levy for a drinkingbout ; while every promotion of a full-fledged craftsman was the occasion of a similar carousal.
Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, records vividly his experience in 1725, when working in Watts' printing house, London, among " great guzzlers " of alcohol.
His companion in the press room drank daily six pints of "' muddling liquor" ; the cost was about five shillings a week ; generally he was in debt ; '"' and thus,"' says
Franklin, "' these poor devils keep themselves always under.'' :
After a few weeks in the press room, Franklin was called to the composing room, where a "new" bien venu (sum for drink) of five shillings was demanded of him.
Having " paid below " he at first withstood the demand; but this made him '" an excommunicate "' : so whenever he left the room " the chappel
1See Sir John Fielding, Observations on Penal Laws (1761).
Justice Buller, Justice Colquhoun and Wilberforce were among those who led public opinion against this social curse.
EXPIRING HOPES
" ghost '? mixed his type, transposed his pages and broke up his matter.
In little over a fortnight he found himself "' obliged to comply and pay the money, convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually" ; and often to avoid abuse or ill-feeling, he had to lend " near thirty shillings
; week " to fellow craftsmen who "continued sotting with eer.'"* Tili well into the second half of the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for publicans to be constables, or watchmen.
Many Justices of the Peace, too, and Members of Parliament, as well as squires and lords, were '' deeply interested " in the distilling and brewing trades.
The young savages of boasted aristocratic blood who, as '' Mohocks,''? in the early decades of the century, committed such outrages upon women and wrought such barbarities on London's streets, were always regaled with alcohol and always sallied forth on their mad " sport "' from '' pubs." Drinking " dives," too, were the regular quarters of crimps, touts, pliers, kidnappers, hizhwaymen, pickpockets, and fakirs of every description; while commonly lawyers, physicians and merchants conducted much of their business
'over jugs of intoxicants, in the heady atmosphere of the public house.
In a hundred ways eighteenth century liquor interests laid a corrupting hand on industry and business ; but no practice was more contemptible than that of '"' buying carcases,"' a species of guile clearly described by Dr. William Smith, the benefactor of many prisoners.
In the case of an " ingenious " craftsman the publican '' encourages him to drink till he gets considerably in debt."
Then his note is demanded, " which the publican sells to some person in the same trade with the debtor, who is obliged to work for his creditor, or go to gaol.''
Defoe as early as 1702 said that to be "an honest, drunken fellow " was '' a character in a man's praise "' ; but the "' honest, drunken fellow" found many dishonest, drunken fellows ever ready to prey upon his honesty.
Dr. George, in her recent research into the eighteenth century, has been driven to agree with the vast majority of disinterested and reputable contemporaries that the cardinal cause of the admitted social retrogression between 1720 and 1750, was the multi-headed liquor traffic, with its fiery spirits and strong beers, and its innumerable
1 See "The Water American" (Model English Prose.
Edited by Professor G. R. Carpenter), pp. 73-42 Lecky, I, p. 482 ; Swift's fournal to Stella.
3 See Sir Walter Besant, London in the Eighteenth Century, p. 241.
4Dr. W. Smith, Mild Punishments Sound Policy (1778), Pp. 42-
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
ramifications in the nation's work-a-day life.t The number even of eminent men whose lives in the eighteenth century were blighted by drink is too great to cite.
Bolingbroke, Oxford, Chesterfield, Addison, Steele, Cartaret, Pulteney, Pitt, Fox, Goldsmith and Burns, to say nothing of Walpole, are but illustrative of its highly talented victims.
As for the multitude, Henry Fielding's Increase of Robbers (1751) predicted that, * Should the drinking of this poison be continued at its present height during the next twenty years, there will by that time, be very few of the common people left to drink it."
This drunkenness, however, was an effect as well as a cause of social retrogression ; it was an expression of the demoralising <eztgeist of the age.
In 1736 an Act was passed (g George II, C. 23) designed practically to prohibit the trade in spirituous liquors ; but having no real support in public opinion, it was still-born.
Again in 1743, despite the opposition of the bench of bishops, a Bill was carried (16 George II, C. 8) for the suppression of the increasing
'© clandestine trade."
It too was futile.
Not till 1751, when the vehement temperance teaching of the Evangelical Revival had already been heard throughout the land, and when groups of converts in every considerable community were committed to total abstinence, was Law of any avail.
In that year the famous Act passed by the Pelham Government (24 George II, C. 40) marked the legislative beginning of Britain's emancipation from the thraldom of the liquor traffic.
Progress, indeed, was all too slow.
But never again was drunkenness in England comparable to the bestial degradation of the preceding half-century.
Relatively, in 1751, the '"' Gin Age" closed.® (iii) Perverted Concepiions of Sport The chief sports of the time were characteristic of a ruminflamed mentality, cruelty, gambling and coarseness being their outstanding marks, and the ruthless torture of animals their pivotal allurement.
Typical, for instance, of the amusements advertised in London, in the third decade of the century, is the following:
"' A mad bull to be dressed up with fireworks and turned loose in the game place, a dog to be dressed up with 1 London Life in the Eighteenth Century.
See especially Introduction and chapters I and VI.
2 Lecky, I, pp. 477-8.
3 For nineteenth and twentieth century aspects of the liquor traffic, see Dr. J. Wesley Bready's Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress chapter XXI.
(Allen & Unwin, fourth cheap edition, 7s. 6d.) :
EXPIRING HOPES I51 fireworks over him ; a bear tobe let loose at the same time, and a cat to be tied to the bull's tail; a mad bull dressed up with fireworks to be baited.'!
The "' baiting "' of bulls, bears, badgers, etc., was specially popular.
Usually these '' shows" took place in public house grounds or on village commons ; but not infrequently they were conducted in village Church yards or on Cathedral greens.
In the case of bull-baiting the ** bullard," arriving with his animal in any village, invited the patronage of all '" bull-hankers.'"
The beast then was chained to a stake and anyone who paid a shilling might set his dog at him for a specified time.
Frequently, of course, the dogs were gored and killed; more frequently they were hurled high into the air, and often their owners carried long staves to break their fall.
But the condition of the tortured bull was extremely pitiable ; fighting perhaps a dozen dogs in a day, " his head and neck invariably were disfigured with scars,' while raw, bleeding wounds were always in evidence.?
Bear-baiting was after the same order ; but for this sport an admission of at least 3d. to 6d. was charged, the bear being a rarer animal and providing a " better show."
'Two or three dogs were set on a bear at once, and anyone who brought a '"'came dog " was "' admitted 'gratis."" An advertisement in the Daily Advertiser (January 29th, 1747), describing a bear about to be baited as '' the celebrated white sea-bear .
. arrived at his utmost strength and perfection," says:
'' It is not doubted from his uncommon size, excessive weight, and more than savage fierceness, but he will afford extraordinary entertainment ! "
The same newspaper, on November 28th of the same year, describes a he-tiger about to be baited as " the largest that ever was seen here, being eight feet in length," and " one of the fiercest and swiftest of savage beasts."
'The journal, of course, predicted that the baiting would "afford good sport."
London attraction in 1717 advertised as its chief turn " the baiting of a tiger by six bull and bear dogs" ; while the lesser items, of the same entertainment included the playing at "blunts " (i.e. fighting with sticks) by six young men, "he to get the prize who broke most heads.""* Sometimes these animal torturing shows advertised that a bear would be "baited to death," in which case the entertainment would begin " exactly at three o'clock in the afternoon, because the sport continued long." *
1 Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 259.
See, too, Sydney's England and the English, Vol. I, p. 180.
2 See E. D. Cuming, " Sports and Games " (Johnson's England, Vol. I, P. 375)- '
3 See Besant, op. cit., p. 440.
4 Weekly Journal (June goth, 1716).
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BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
So popular and so lucrative proved the bear-baiting sport that London alone, in the first half of the century, had four recognised
"' bear-gardens "'—one on Bankside, Southwark, one south of Soho Square, another in Tothill Fields and the far-famed one of Hockley-in-the-Hole, where one proprietor, Christopher Preston, was "killed and devoured" by "his own bears."*
In the case of badger-baiting, the badger was secured to a stake by "a chain passed through his tail," and because of the amazing strength of his jaws " he might maim or kill half a dozen dogs before he succumbed himself.''?
Cock-fighting, however, was the universal sport ; to it all classes, from peer to cowherd, were " addicted "' ; and from its peculiar parlance, have sprung such vernacular expressions as "pit against," "cut out for," "scoot" and " cock-pit."
In the case of a ploughman or labourer who simply sharpened the beak and spurs of his bird with a knife, he normally would take his cock in a sack to a public house and challenge anybody present to pit one against it.
Then, after all bets had been placed, the cocks would be shaken from their bags and the fight would continue for perhaps an hour, generally till one bird was killed.
But more than likely some rustic would now produce a "surprise sack" and bet a roast goose or a barrel of beer
'that his cock could "lick" the winner.
Time would then be allowed for a round of '' drinks' and the arrangement of new bets, before the victor, still half-exhausted, would face his new foe.
In the case of organised rural cockings, they commonly were held in village churchyards ; the roosters on such occasions being equipped with sharp steel or silver " heels," two to twoand-a-half inches long: and perhaps a dozen birds in turn would be set to '' win their spurs," or die in the attempt.
The "' great' cocking events however took the form of the Main or Welsh Main and in these tournaments, generally lasting from two to five days, county was pitted against county, town against town, peer against peer ; while the stakes not uncommonly ran as high as a thousand guineas.
In order that one competitor should win a majority of battles, a Main had to consist of an odd number of cocks, forty-one being usual, and in the case of a " Welsh Main "' it was customary, after several days battle, for every bird save the final victor to be killed in fight.
Small wonder therefore that, at the conclusion of a cocking, it was often said that both promoters and spectators were "glutted with blood."
Yet many eighteenth century clergymen bred fighting cocks and supported this " royal 1 Besant, p. 440, * Cuming, op. cit., p. 375.
EXPIRING HOPES
sport," while sometimes Church bells were rung to honour a local winner of a Welsh Main.
Cock-fighting, admittedly, was all too prevalent in England before the eighteenth century ; but it was left to the first half of that century to popularise metal spurs, to introduce " long mains"; greatly to multiply stakes, and to make cocking a recognised and accepted school sport.?
Other '"'sports" with birds were equally brutalising.
A favourite was to bind an owl tightly on a duck's back and throw them into a lake.
The duck, of course, dived to free itself of its burden ; the owl floundered and fought, and often both birds were dead before the '' fun" stopped.
In the case of " gooseriding " a live goose with '"' neck well greased '' was suspended by the feet from a high horizontal bough or pole, and competitors, riding beneath at a gallop, tried to snatch off its head.
Cock-throwing " expressed English antipathy to the French, then symbolised by that much-abused bird.
A trained cock was tied by the leg to a peg, and from a distance of twenty-two yards you might throw at him with a broomstick for a penny a shot, or six shots for 5d.
If you knocked him over and could run and seize him before he rose, the bird was yours.
The setting of trained dogs, also, on domestic ducks in lakes was a favourite recreation; hunting, in general, was excessively cruel ; while horse racing at this period, says Cuming,
" was less a contest of speed than a running fight among the jockeys."'?
An early eighteenth century race was frequently run in three heats of four miles each on the same day and represented an endurance test both for horses and jockeys.
Any beast "on four legs might be entered and flogged over the course Hos crossing and jostling were quite in order; jockies lashed, kicked and entwined legs in attempts to unseat each other, while some were not above boasting of the " eyes and teeth" they had " beat out."* The crowds around the course were of the same kidney.
If a jockey lost a race, those who lost their bets were likely to set upon him with stones, sticks, ropes and whips, to remind him he " could not ride'': if he won, he was almost certain of like abuse as a rogue and a cheat from the large rabble who had " backed " other favourites.
Cudgel play and pugilism, again, were popular sports, known 1Cuming, p. 372ff; Roberts's Social History of the Southern Counties, p. 421f ; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, III, p. 268f ; Latimer's
Annals of Bristol, p. 140f ; Besant, op. cit., p. 437f ; and Hogarth's engraving,
"The Cock Pit."
2 Op. cit., p. 364.
; ; 3 J. Lawrence, History and Delineation of the Horse, p. 249.
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to every community.
In the former the contestant who first clubbed blood from his opponent's head, was acclaimed winner of the bout!: the latter, as practised in the first half of the century, has been aptly described as " downright slaughtering."
No gloves or mufflers were then allowed to interfere with the grandeur of the 'noble art"
; and women as well as men through this medium might court the favour of the mob.
In the case of a pugilist who had hammered his way to fame, he generally won the patronage of a sporting peer and became the object of huge bets; but every district had its popular local '' bruisers,'? male and female, and all contests,
"' prize " or local, till the latter part of the century, were fought on a stage scarcely raised above the ground.
Hence backers of a fighter who was faring badly often would "force their way into the ring, and, with kicks and blows, strive to disable his opponent.""
Many a pugilist was so cruelly beaten-up that he had to be carried from the ring.?
The noble art lent itself to all manner of occasions, and many are the fighting challenges which appeared in the eighteenth century press.
On -October 7th, 1728, the Dazly Post, in announcing a '"' boxing match" to be held that day in an amphitheatre in Islington Road, London, printed this challenge :
Whereas I, Ann Field, of Stoke Newington, ass driver, well known for my abilities in boxing in my own defence... having been affronted by Mrs. Stokes, styled the European championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of her best skill in boxing for £10, fair rise and fall ; and question not but to give her such proofs of my judgment that shall oblige her to acknowledge me championess of the stage, to the satisfaction of all my friends."
Alongside was printed Mrs. Stokes's reply: "I Elizabeth Stokes, of the City of London, have not fought in this way since I fought the famous boxing woman of Billingsgate nine minutes, and gained a complete victory, which is six years ago; but as the famous Stoke Newington ass woman dares me to fight her for £10, I do assure her I will not fail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with, will be more difficult for her to digest than any she ever gave her asses."
In this gin period moreover many an " emancipated" woman, after a round of angry argument with a man, challenged him to strip off his coat and "' prove his manhood," which frequently he quite failed to do.
But these " mixed" fights were generally spontaneous affairs fought off in drinking-house
1 Fohnson's England, I, p. 378.
* Ibid., p. 376f.